The Girl in the Photograph (35 page)

“I want my purse. My purse.”

I give her the purse and go to fill the teakettle. Why do things always have to happen
at the same time? The strike ending, exams starting tomorrow, Mama going berserk,
Dr. Francis dying just now when Mieux decides to take off, isn’t it really a dose
for an
iguanodon
? How would you translate
iguanodon”?
Lião howling with impatience, discourses and other sentiments and
here I am with Ana Clara. I should be studying, shouldn’t I? Yes I should. The abyss
between
existence
and
being
. I
am
with Annie and to be with Annie is to be with the winds, the rocks and the tempest,
ah, M.N., why don’t you give me a job as a nurse in your hospital? Did you get my
note? And aren’t you going to answer it?

“It’s on the ceiling.”

“What’s on the ceiling?” I ask.

I sense my expression to be so sad that I’m moved by it. I’m feeling sorry for myself
and that’s not healthy.

“The time! I need to know right away!” she cries still staring at the same point near
the light fixture. “Never mind. Next year without fail. Next year.”

She must be promising God the same bla-bla-bla she promises Mother Alix. Neither of
them believe her and yet, because she’s the blackest sheep in the flock … “
Miserere Nobis
,” I say and spread my hands wide above the lid of the teakettle. It retributes my
gesture with a hot puff of steam. Ana Clara lets out a groan and says something so
mixed-up, what, Aninha? I make her lie down again, a pain somewhere? It must have
passed because now she’s cackling with laughter. Her curly hair grows shinier as it
dries; her pleasure-crossed eyes have darkened maliciously. The collar of the bathrobe
is open and her neck thickens as she laughs, tense and corded. The bruises on her
breasts. The spot on her arm, pressing like a finger against the principal vein. “
Res accessoria
,” I say vaguely. I watch her, fascinated. Her tongue rolls up, obscene. A possessed
Dionysian figure contorted in the red robe. I pull the quilt up to her neck and hold
her still. She grows calm. Her crazed eyes soften.

“It’s cold, Lena. I’m so cold.”

I adjust the pillows closer around her body.

“You’re going to drink some nice hot tea.”

“I’ll say that—”

Her eyes close. Hands folded, asleep, she has turned into an angel. I pick up the
red bath towel from the floor and roll up her blood-stained blouse, I didn’t see the
blood but I could feel its moisture on my hand and I folded it fast because I thought
Mama wouldn’t like people looking at the stained shirt, since the blood was being
washed off his chest in the bathtub. She locked herself in with Romulo and didn’t
let anyone help her: “I’ll bathe my son.” Romulo, Romulo. At times I feel that you
continued to live in me, your gestures in mine. Your speech. Later, I’m left by myself,
you tell me that I need to be alone, that I’ll be happy that way, ah, Romulo. How
you’ve grown!

“Give me your hand,” she pleads.

I give her my hand, which she squeezes and then lets go. What is she dreaming about?
I tuck her hand under the cover and run to the boiling water. I turn off the stove.
The scent of the tea tranquilizes me just as incense does, I must burn a little. Drive
away the evil spirits, Annie came in loaded with them as if she had descended into
Hell, are you all right, Annie? I asked in alarm when she tripped on the stairway.
She smiled, cross-eyed: “The horse.” I fold my hands around the cup and sip the tea.
When I undressed her, her expression was that of the Seducer Angel, a brilliance in
her eyes which drifted in and out of focus. “You, Lena? What are you doing to me?”

I open the window. How could nobody in the house have heard her scream? She was screaming
when she arrived. And not a single nun appeared, not even Bulie. It’s lucky all these
TV serials are on in the neighborhood, there’s always wailing and gnashing of teeth
in the background. The cats catting at the top of their lungs as they run through
the flower beds. If we were a calm society Ana would draw attention from all and sundry,
but in this erotic society all and sundry are occupied with eroticism. Few, very few,
are praying. Or thinking. Me, reading about the stars, imagine. They are born and
die just like us, the cosmic vision is the same as that of the world, did you know
that, M.N.? I survey the Milky Way. The larger stars are the younger ones, my generation.
The others, old ones, get smaller and smaller just like Bulie. Until they dissolve,
cease to be, isn’t it lovely? “I’d like so much to grow old in peace, to quit this
sleight-of-hand game,” Mama said so sincerely. “I’m exhausted, daughter. I’m ready
for the wrinkles, the white hair, the freckles, the grandchildren. I’m sick and tired
of sex!” The sickness is short-lived. When the body starts to get lonely, she reacts
with energy, what energy! All it takes is an intriguing invitation which doesn’t even
need to be from a man, even a girlfriend of the stimulating type makes her raise her
head and go running off on the tips of her toes. “Now we’ll live together, dear. Like
in the good old times,” she recalls. But during those good old times she used to complain
so much, were they really that good? Abandon my shell, my delicate world which I love
so much … If it were
at least to go live with M.N., why doesn’t he ask me to come with him on these trips
of his? These high international congresses in which he’s forever participating. I’d
fit into his
necessaire
. And you, Fabrizio. A neurotic little poetess, ask me what it’s like to live with
a neurotic and I’ll tell you. If at least Guga would come to get the shirt which I
haven’t bought yet. I’ll embroider the duck on it but I’m not thinking about the duck,
I’m thinking about his beard, his mouth. The smell of tobacco, sweat, and dust. And
his satin dagger of a tongue that I had to expel, but why expel? Oh Lord, I never
imagined that those goatlike feet, ill-concealed in his sandals and those jeans with
the faded white island at the crotch—I turned my eyes away but I kept on seeing that
faded spot where I had such a desire to … M.N., M.N., so you’re the only one who hasn’t
the courage? Because I’m a virgin, is that it? Does it make that much difference?
We could live in the country, I adore the country. A natural-brick house. A lawn.
Books, music. I want to read you all the poets I admire, my voice isn’t pretty but
at least I’ve learned to make it sound serious; when I try I can correct this nasal
squeak I was born with. They’ll say: alienation, flight. We’ll say: integration, return.
To ourselves, to the sun. To God. My note is decisive: Answer, I wrote a decisive
note. The decisive notes. Everything summed up in this: I love you. It isn’t a simple
friendship between a man and a woman, but a sort of unification, an absolutely harmonic
unit in this chaotic world. The profound feeling. Profound, I repeat and look at Ana
Clara. Asleep. Lião is forever preaching that society expels that which it cannot
assimilate. Ana was driven out with a flaming sword, she said she’d been run through
with a fencing foil, but it wasn’t a foil, it was a sword. Which comes to the same
thing. Peaceful coexistence, the teachers teach. And in practice.

“Lia de Melo Schultz!” I say.

She has arrived. The window of her room has just lit up, ah, Lião, I think your presence
has never been so welcome. If it weren’t so late, and if Annie weren’t in her present
state, I’d shout with all my strength, “Lia de Melo Schultz!” And you’d shout back,
“Present!” I put on my sandals, change my shirt, and cover up Ana Clara’s feet which
have come uncovered. Then I go out the way I learned from Astronaut, leaving the solid
mass of my body behind and taking only its rarefied equivaient.
I can’t see the moon, only a sky scorching with stars. The brighter ones are wearing
low necklines, palpitating. Virgins? let me laugh. Even the daisies are agitated,
their exposed crowns shaking in the wind. I scratch at the window blind. She opens
it and as I jump in my heart contracts. This will be the last time I jump through
her window into this room. I almost trip over the yellow leather suitcase. I pick
it up. Very heavy.

“Packed? Already?”

Lião closes her notebook on the table, she’s been writing. The diary? Oh Lord.

“Don’t you recognize Mama’s suitcase? I was with her for hours. The death of the analyst
who was very refined, the break with the lover who was very gross, so much drama,”
says Lião and suddenly stares closely at me.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Nothing, see. It was a session that would finish even a professional,” she mutters
grinning. “I like her. Very refined, very refined.”

I take the peppermint out of my mouth in order to talk.

“If you only knew, Lião. Imagine: I was reading about the stars, feeling very poetic,
when I heard this uproar on the steps and a scream so blood-curdling my book jumped
up to the ceiling, guess who it was. She was hanging over the banister, shouting that
somebody had stabbed her in the chest with a fencing foil. In short, high as a kite.
Complete madness. And talk about filthy! Her clothes had mud on them, charcoal, some
very suspicious stains. And the smell. I gave her an immersion bath, even her hair
was foul.”

Lião is laughing so hard I can’t finish. I wait. Going to her bag, she takes out a
ball of twine and starts tying together the small piles of books lined up on the floor.
She lights a cigarette and uses it to burn the twine loose after tying each knot.

“And then what?”

“I put her to sleep in my bed. Oh, and purple bruises on her breasts and arm. Horrible
breath, poor little thing, she must have vomited beforehand.”

“But wasn’t she at the country home of some VIP?”

“Good grief, country home! When I asked her she gave me one of those delirious answers
you already know, mixing me up with her boyfriend; she cried, laughed. And tomorrow
morning at eight o’clock sharp I have a final exam, the strike is over, an
exam in Social Legislation. I know it pretty well, but I should at least have taken
a look at one or two points, and did I? The problems fell on me in clusters today.
One can go smoothly along for ages and ages and then all of a sudden.”

Lião ties another stack of books together and begins her caged-in pacing back and
forth.

“I came back in Mama’s car, a fabulous idea because I got my list of things almost
finished, I did all sorts of errands, told friends good-bye—” she says and stops in
front of me. “Everything’s speeded up so much, Miguel has already left.”

“Left?”

“He should be there by now. That means that I’ll be going sooner than I expected,
I want to get the earliest reservation possible, I’ve got everything ready, I’m tingling.
All I needed was a suitcase and Mama gives me this one, I’ll travel with a millionaire’s
bag, oh, Lena! Two more days and I disembark in Casablanca. Then Algiers.”

“Lião, Lião, you’re kidding! And what about our farewell party? We were going to have
a farewell party!”

“There’s no time. One day we’ll throw a party because the time for celebration is
coming, but now I’ve got to pack up and take off for the airport, oh, am I scared.
I’m no bird,” she mutters picking up the suitcase. She places it on the table. “When
I came down from Salvador, the stewardess, a very refined girl as Mama would say,
advised over the microphone that due to technical difficulties something-or-other
was going to happen and therefore we should all put out our cigarettes and tighten
our seat belts. I didn’t understand what was going to happen but after the
due to technical difficulties
the airplane parted soul from body. I had the worst case of diarrhea the world has
yet known.”

Lorena makes a panicked face, laughs and sits down on the newspapers piled up on the
floor. She sighs as she takes a peppermint lozenge from her pocket.

“So you’re really going. I know you’ve been talking about it, the trip the trip, but
I thought it was more vague, almost a joke. Ah, Lião,” she sighs. Then, taking heart:
“I’ll go to see you off at the airport, naturally.”

“Better not, Lorena, no good-byes,” I say and look at her snow-white sandals, so white
they could have come from the store this instant. “I’m going to leave with the greatest
discretion,
even my coat is black, Mama gave me a fabulous coat, she says she went all over Europe
in it, a
cache-misère
, she explained. Isn’t that neat? Except that in my case it really will be hiding
a misery much bigger than all the philosophic mothers dream of, oh, Lena. If I don’t
go crazy first, I’ll send you letters from over there, postcards, diaries.”

“I don’t think you’ll write. Or come back either.”

“No, don’t talk like Mama, shit, if you’d heard her. In spite of her suffering and
whatnot she wanted to know if I had
anyone
. I spoke of a man and that magic word resolved everything, thank goodness, I wouldn’t
pollute you after all. She asked if you were still a virgin. ‘Unfortunately,’ I almost
said. She was happy to learn this but unhappy at the same time, it’s more complicated
than it seems, why is it that to this day, you being the marvel that you are, nobody
…”

Now Lorena giggles, covering her mouth and I laugh with her, the same conspiratorial
laugh. Two infidels enjoying their unfaithfulness.

“Tell me some more. Did she mention Ana Clara?”

“Naturally. She believes in bad company, she doubts everyone, even the nuns could
exercise their influence, see. Then, turning the page: The man you’ve been hanging
around with,
by chance
isn’t he married?
By chance
I answered that I didn’t know and she was most alarmed, how could I not know? More
tears etcetera, and after tea and presents I said good-bye with the greatest gratitude.
End of story.”

“Federico García Lorca,” Lorena murmurs looking at the black-and-white poster thumbtacked
to the door of my wardrobe. She crushes the peppermint between her teeth, breathing
through her mouth. “How marvelous-looking he was.”